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NASA's Shuttle and Rocket Launch Schedules

A variety of vehicles, launch sites on both U.S. coasts, shifting dates and times... the NASA Launch Schedule is easy to decipher by checking out our Launch Schedule 101 that explains how it all works!

How do you calibrate a huge gravitational lens? In this case the lens is the galaxy cluster Abell 383, a massive conglomeration of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter that lies about 2.5 billion light years away (redshift z=0.187). What needs calibrating is the mass of the cluster, in particular the amount and distribution of dark matter. A new calibration technique has been tested recently that consists of waiting for supernovas of a very specific type to occur behind a galaxy cluster, and then figuring out how much the cluster must have magnified these supernovas through gravitational lensing. This technique complements other measures including computing the dark matter needed to contain internal galaxy motions, to confine cluster hot gas, and to create the gravitational lens image distortions. Pictured above from the Hubble Space Telescope, galaxy cluster A383 shows its gravitational lens capabilities on the right by highly distorting background galaxies behind the cluster center. On the left is a distant galaxy shown both before and after a recent revealing supernova. To date, calibration-quality supernovas of Type Ia have been found behind twoother galaxy clusters by the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) project.

Sunday, May 4, 2014

If Scorpius looked this good to the unaided eye, humans might remember it better. Scorpius more typically appears as a few bright stars in a well-known but rarely pointed out zodiacalconstellation. To get a spectacular image like this, though, one needs a good camera, color filters, and a digital image processor. To bring out detail, the above image not only involved long duration exposures taken in several colors, but one exposure in a very specific red color emitted by hydrogen. The resulting image shows many breathtaking features. Vertically across the image left is part of the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Visible there are vast clouds of bright stars and long filaments of dark dust. Jutting out diagonally from the Milky Way in the image center are dark dust bands known as the Dark River. This river connects to several bright stars on the right that are part ofScorpius' head and claws, and include the bright star Antares. Above and right of Antares is an even brighter planet Jupiter. Numerous red emission nebulas and blue reflection nebulas are visible throughout the image.Scorpius appears prominently in southern skies after sunset during the middle of the year.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

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Saturday, April 14, 2012

How many moons does Saturn have?
So far 62 have
been discovered, the smallest only a fraction
of a kilometer across.
Six of its largest satellites can be seen here, though, in a sharp
Saturnian family portrait
taken on March 9.
Larger than Earth's Moon and even slightly larger than Mercury,
Titan
has a diameter of 5,150 kilometers and starts the line-up
at the lower left.
Continuing to the right across the frame are
Mimas,
Tethys, [Saturn],
Enceladus,
Dione, and
Rhea at far right.
Saturn's first known natural satellite, Titan was
discovered in 1655 by
Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, while most recently the
satellite provisionally designated
S/2009 S1 was found
by the Cassini Imaging Science Team in 2009.
Tonight,
Saturn reaches opposition
in planet Earth's sky, offering
the best telescopic views of the ringed planet and moons

Friday, April 13, 2012

It was late in the northern martian spring
when the HiRISE camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
spied
this local denizen.
Tracking south and east (down and right)
across the flat, dust-covered
Amazonis Planitia
the core of the
whirling dust devil is about 30 meters in diameter.
Lofting dust into the thin
martian
atmosphere, its plume
reaches more than 800 meters above the surface.
Not following the path of the dust devil, the plume is blown toward
the east by a westerly breeze.
Common in this region,
dust devils occur as the surface is heated by the Sun,
generating warm, rising air currents that begin to rotate.
Tangential
wind speeds of up to 110 kilometers per hour are reported
for
dust devils in other HiRISE images.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

On another April 12th,
in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexseyevich Gagarin
became the first human
to see planet Earth from space.
Commenting on his
view from orbit
he reported, "The sky is very dark; the Earth is bluish.
Everything is seen very clearly".
To celebrate, consider this recent image from the orbiting
International Space Station.
A stunning view of the planet at night
from an altitude of 240 miles, it was recorded on March 28.
The lights of Moscow, Russia are near picture center
and one of the station's solar panel arrays is on the left.
Aurora and the glare of sunlight lie
along the planet's gently curving horizon.
Stars above the horizon include the compact
Pleiades star cluster,
immersed in the auroral glow.

Featured Videos

Build the Future

Students used LEGOs to 'Build the Future' at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. on Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010. The 'Build the Future' event was part of pre-launch activities for the STS-133 mission. NASA and The LEGO Group signed a Space Act Agreement that features educational games and activities designed to spark children's interest in science, technology, engineering and math.